The Dispatch Podcast - Our Failing Branches of Government | Roundtable

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

Sarah Isgur, David French, and Jonah Goldberg discuss the sad state of the three branches of government and the wild, wild world of tariffs. The Agenda: —Judicial branch wins for the week —Congress does nothing —The youths yearn for the assembly line —Free trade is good —Abusing emergency powers —Trump's comments on Chris Krebs —Throw cheese slices at your kid? Show Notes: —Our editorial: Slouching Towards Tyranny —Thursday morning's TMD on the budget battle —For premium members: Dispatch Town Hall The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and regular livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonah, I'm having dental work done. I was going to ask what the hell's going on. Welcome to the dispatch podcast, and we have excluded Steve Hayes this week. So we have Jonah Goldberg and David French. And there is a reason for that that will become. clear in a few moments. Guys, I thought we could do a check-in on our three branches of government this week, following up on a project that we did about two years ago now.

We were team conservative at the National Constitution Centers restoring the guardrails of democracy. And we wrote our suggestions for what we could do to improve the guardrails of democracy. But of course, in order to know how the guardrails are doing, I think we got to do a check-in. So, David, I'm going to start with you. Just, you know, go around the horn, if you will, for the branches. Tell us how you think they're doing. Well, I've only got good things to say about one branch right now. I'm particularly interested in that branch, the judicial branch, really this week,

because as we talked about on advisory opinions, there was a moment this week where, there seemed to be some judicial jiu-jitsu in a positive sense. In other words, that the Supreme Court very shrewdly rendered a decision that preserved the constitutional structure, that preserved due process, that preserved the opportunity to challenge acts of the executive branch, while at the same time, somehow the executive branch cheered all of that. We had this very strange phenomenon

where there was nine justices of the Supreme Court, who very clearly said that detainees or individuals who are going to be deported under the Alien Enemies Act to get an opportunity to challenge that in habeas, not only have an opportunity to challenge their deport, you know, the decision to deport them in court, they also will have an opportunity to challenge the applicability of the Aliens' Enemies Act itself. But because they vacated a TRO, five justices vacated a TRO that was holding back the Trump had administration, the Trump administration cheered it as if it was a big victory. Very strange. And then you began to have judges just this week using that Supreme Court decision to block further deportations

under the Aliens Enemies Act. So you actually had the judicial branch asserting some strengths this week and doing it in a particularly shrewd way. You also had, is it one of those situations where, you know, you're in the movie and the patient is in the ER and they have completely flatlined. And the movie like focuses on that flat line for 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds. And then you see bleep. And it's like there is that one heartbeat. And that was about six or seven members of Congress, six or seven senators saying, hey, maybe we could possibly, if it doesn't offend anybody too much, do something about tariffs.

And that was the most positive thing I've seen out of Congress in forever. And as far as the presidency goes, I mean, we'll be talking about this. We'll be talking about this tariff reversal. And the utter chaos, one person was able to impose on the globe through his own whim, thank you to the institution I just referred to Congress so we could talk more about the drunk on power presidency

not great in total but one of the three did something real this week. So Jonah one of Congress's main maybe the main power that Congress has is the power of the purse its budget season on the hill

are we going to have a budget this year? Oh, bless you. your heart. Yeah, look, I think eventually you're going to get a budget, right? Whether we get the one big beautiful bill, as Donald Trump likes to call it, and now I think you're required to call it in the Republican caucus or your pain collar will be activated is unclear. But if on the level of rank punitry, I would say eventually they're going to get to something that looks like it. That said, so basically what's going on, and we're not going to, I don't think you guys can override me. because I know what both of you like to do the most is really granular up-to-the-minute congressional punditry.

But for listeners, just for the due diligence point of it, basically what's going on is, if you want a shorthand of it is the Senate wants to focus almost entirely on tax cuts and not spending cuts. The House, or at least the people who are mostly sort of House Freedom Caucus guys, want to focus on pretty significant. significant spending cuts and then yeah also tax cuts but like like that's the difference is like the the Senate's conception of what the budget should look like is cutting very little like singular billions or tens of billions or something like that and the the house guys want to cut like 1.2 1.4 trillion something in there and that's a big gulf to close and the house guys do not trust the Senate. There's a lot of talk behind the scenes about like assurances that the Senate will get to more spending cuts and that kind of stuff. But just the political incentives are very different

in the Senate and in the House. And so Johnson had to pull a bill yesterday because he couldn't get all the Republicans to vote. And the only thing that's really sort of different now than a month ago, or three weeks ago, whatever it was, in the before times back when we had a world trade order. They were pretty good at passing a budget resolution which put this stuff in motion. And it turned out that back then, it was precisely because Republicans have so few votes they could get it passed because nobody wanted to be the one to kill the thing. And I guess that logic now no longer works because they're like 13 of them or 15 of them who just don't want to again sign for sign up for a big spending thing.

So Johnson, Mike Johnson might pull it into, I think he's going to let people go home for Passover, but then they're going to have to do some crazy thing. And by the time I finish this sentence, all of this may not be true anymore. That's the gist of it really developed. Oh, and Donald Trump, to bring it back to where we should have this, where we wanted to have this conversation,

at a big fundraiser for the House GOP, Donald Trump said many things that I disagree with. and among them was that the states are just agents of the federal government that they just need to do basically what the federal government was. I think that's a teaser about how Trump is trying to lay down the argument about how state and local law enforcement are the ones are going to have to do a lot of the immigration enforcement stuff. He also said to get us back to the trade topic that how awesome it was

that all these countries are calling them up and kissing his ass, which I think is the thing he, one of the things he loves most about tariffs is that it forces rational and sane people and entities and institutions to be supplicants to him and to ask for deals and favors. That aspect of protectionism is why Congress originally gave outsourced its power to control trade to the president

because they didn't think they could be trusted with that corrupting influence of it. And the problem is we now finally have a president who likes that corrupting influence of it thinks it's a feature, not a bug. Does Congress having fights over whether to do tax cuts or spending cuts feel a little like the dinosaurs planning their birthday party as they see this glowing thing in the sky? Like, huh?

It's quaint, isn't it? It's adorable. It's almost like someone getting up on the floor and saying, hey, we haven't formally declared war. Shouldn't we do that? You know, it's just one of those things that Congress used to do that seem normal. Let's spend a moment on what I think we all agree is the real. root of this problem, right? Congress abdicating its role. And David, will you sing a few bars on how you think we got here? Because I think it's very easy to blame Trump. But I actually don't particularly blame Trump. This was like a long time in coming. And if you leave such a power

vacuum where nobody's solving problems, I think it's very natural for the only other branch that really has any power to do that, to step in and be like, okay, I'll do it. And then that didn't start with Trump. I want to get to the tariffs, which I think are an amazing example of Congress abdicating its authority, but I think you have to back up to, you know, how we got here. Well, you can't blame the less powerful branch when the more powerful branch subordinates itself. So, you know, that's where, you know, that your statement, you can't just, quote, blame Trump. Yeah, you cannot just blame Trump because what we have here, and I, you know, Jonah has hummed more than a few bars on this. I think for everyone on this podcast, the phrase

co-equal branches of government is a trigger phrase because it is false. It is wrong that structurally Congress is supreme. Yes, it's checkable by the president in the judicial branch in certain ways, but it is supreme. For Congress to get where it is today, it had to get there voluntarily. It could not have been forced into the position it is in. Now, that being said, I think one of the key reasons why it is in the position that it is in is related to some very large structural forces around the big sort about how we're clustering in these like-minded communities compounded by gerrymandering so that for the vast majority of these seats, and again, this is not an original observation at all here. But for the vast majority of these seats, they're not competitive here.

Your threat to your job comes from the primary process, period. That's it. That is all. And so there is a constant pressure for a majority of the Congress to push outwards towards the extremes. So that's one thing that's happening. And then the other thing that's happening is as Congress becomes more dysfunctional, as it becomes less of a coalitional body where you can have shifting alliances depending on the issues, as we get really much more polarized, then at that point, the presidency then become seen as, and while Stephen Miller is totally, totally wrong about this as a matter of constitutional structure, in many ways he's right about this as the way people perceive it in the

world, that the president is seen as the expression of the will of the people, because Congress isn't seen as the will, expression of the will of people, because Congress does nothing. As Congress has receded, the vacuum has been filled by a president who's stepped forward and is now seen by millions of Americans as sort of, okay, your job Congress is to support him or your job, depending on where you are on the political spectrum, is to oppose him. And that's it. That is your job. He is the leader of the party for the party in power.

Everyone needs to support the leader of the party. He is the leader of the opposition for the party out of power. Everybody needs to oppose him. That's where we are. I mean, it's a kind of a simple thing to explain, but extraordinarily difficult. to do anything about. Jonah, how do you think we got here? The Jews.

No, you know, in my moonlighting time, I'm an AEI guy, and I work for not only a handsome man, but a powerful man to name Yvall Levin, or at least in his department. One of the things, you know, he convinced me off was that lots of it, we've lost faith and trust in institutions, institutional decay, we talked about a million times we all know the arguments.

But one of the points that I think is really important to give me one is that institutions, people don't form institutions so they have reasons to hang out with their friends and have civic life with each other. They form institutions to do things. I think that one of the problems we've gotten into in society in general is that technology has sapped the necessity out of a lot of institutions. We can sit at home and absorb life intermediated through screens. This has caused us to follow politics more as a form of entertainment than as a thing that is a reflection of our interests. And then for all the reasons that Sarah has can, you know, there's not a shoe shine guy or a nail salon worker on the Eastern Seaboard that hasn't heard Sarah complain about campaign finance reform and small donors and whatnot. but technology has made it easy to participate in politics like its fan duel or some online gaming thing rather than a mechanism that actually adjudicates and mediates interests.

And as a result, the institutions of our politics like Congress, they don't know how to do the job anymore because they haven't been getting the signals from the system about falling down on the job. People aren't bringing them the problems to solve so that when they don't solve, the problems. No one complains that they're not solving the problems. And the normal mechanisms of civil society and of our constitutional order just aren't working for Congress anymore. And when Congress falls down, the other institutions fill the vacuum. And that's the mess that you get, if that makes any sense. So now I want to fast forward to April 2025 and back up a little bit

in April 2025 to Liberation Day. And I want to see if you guys think that there is any problem that's worth trying to solve. I'm not saying you're going to agree with what the solution that Donald Trump used was, right? I know you guys don't like the worldwide tariffs. I think that goes without saying. This, David, goes to a certain amount of nostalgia,

which is, I think you're going to argue, incorrect in a lot of respects. But do you acknowledge that there is, there was a decision made to change the American economy because other countries would have a competitive advantage at certain low-tech manufacturing manual jobs. And once we did that, of course, it meant that our economy was going to specialize in higher tech, email jobs, as people call them,

and that that was going to leave some people behind. And that whenever you're going to do that and shift an economy, there's going to be tradeoffs. And the tradeoffs were something like we became a much wealthier nation as a nation. We had a lot more cheap stuff that we could buy from those other countries with that competitive advantage. And we were going to leave some people behind in that economy. You know, the whole like coal miners can learn to code or whatever isn't how it works.

What works is that like, no, eventually they die. And we have trained up a new generation to do email jobs, you hope. But in the meantime, that's going to be pretty bad for the people that you leave behind in the economy. So with that is the very, very quick argument, do you think that Liberation Day was actually about solving a real problem or just a totally nostalgia made up problem? Liberation Day was mainly about solving a made up problem, but there are real problems. So if you're going to talk about what is the problem with the American economy, I do not say, the absence of lower wage factory jobs is really core to it. If you're going to, you know, one of the interesting things about the present moment with manufacturing in this country,

your median manufacturing job in the U.S. actually pays pretty well. And that's partly a function of what we're manufacturing. We're making a lot of really high-end stuff. And that high-end stuff that we're making, a lot of it isn't really all that low-skill labor. We actually have a hard time filling all the manufacturing jobs that we have right now in the economy at any given moment there are several hundred thousand unfilled manufacturing jobs so the question it really isn't when you're talking about what's going on in the current economy the question is for that segment of americans who are not doing well is the answer to somehow reshore making nikes and that i do not believe is the answer and one of the reasons why i do not believe that is the answer is because

working class people for generations before we were offshoring Nikes, were really working very hard to make sure that their kids were not doing the same job that they were doing. A lot of those jobs that we offshoreed were jobs that people would have at the time that they would consider themselves having been left behind in the economy having those kinds of jobs. And so a lot of what we're talking about here is reshoring jobs that entire generations of Americans worked really hard at to not have their children do these jobs. And so we're talking about a kind and economic life and a kind of manufacturing that is not in fact something that the American people were coveting or demanding and was not in fact part of an economy that the American people

were coveting and demanding. The way in which the American people moved the economy was expression in many ways of their own will and their own volition. And this is something that we see in virtually every single economy that exists in the world as it becomes more advanced. These kinds of got jobs tend to go other places. And so I very much question the premise that this sort of low-skill, low-wage manufacturing job is the solution to anything that actually ails us,

especially when the income and prosperity by every material measure for the class of Americans that the Trump administration, is quote unquote trying to save here is better than it was in that alleged golden era of manufacturing. So you have higher standards of living. You have more prosperity just objectively at every level of American society than you had in the economic period in which they're trying to return us to. Now, that's not to say that we don't have some needs to reshore or bring back manufacturing, especially as it regards the defense industry. And we should not have China in a single

important military supply chain. Like I am 100 percent in agreement of that. But that is a very different thing from sort of saying what we're going to do is we're going to wrench America out of the global economic system, place it in its own, make it its own thing for the sake of restoring a vision of the United States of America that in reality, forget the nostalgia for a minute, that in reality was poorer, was more difficult for working class Americans, was more physically demanding for working class Americans, and something that millions of working class Americans did not want for their kids. And so to bring that back, because you have also these sort of intangible, you ascribe these sort of intangible spiritual qualities of masculinity to certain

industries, I mean, you know, at some point you're looking at and you're thinking, what are we doing here. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months.

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use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Jonah, at the same time, a lot of common occurrence is you used to be able to do this on one income. Right? You used to be able to have a one-income family and support them and own a house. And now you have young people who cannot afford housing until they're in their late 30s or 40s, and you need a two-income family. And that's the objection. It's a structural objection. Yeah. I'm really glad that you brought up housing because I agree with David on this. I think there are real problems. They almost have nothing to do with trade. In fact, trade is one of the few things that ameliorates and improves the real problems that we have. Housing, massive problem. And in fact,

a huge chunk of the unaffordability of the American economy for young people has to do with housing. The stuff we get from trade that relates to housing makes housing cheaper, cheaper lumber, cheaper materials, cheaper labor, too, to a certain extent, right? You know, whether it's prefabbed over there or whether it's immigrants or whatever, right? So trade and immigration, these are things that are good for making housing cheaper. What's bad for making housing cheaper is idiotic zoning, is nimbism, our various environmental regulations

and all that kind of stuff. If you fixed those things, you would have much more improvements of the stuff that you're talking about than making construction materials more expensive wood, which is what the tariff stuff wants to do. I agree also with David,

like a huge amount of this stuff is really economic policy by nostalgia. We have this assumption that people just glibly use manufacturing job as synonymous with well-paid job. Well, in America right now, service jobs actually, the manufacturing premium for jobs has pretty much gone away. There are a lot of service jobs that pay a lot better than comparable, you know, manufacturing jobs.

The Trump administration seems to think manufacturing job is synonymous with automaker jobs. But a lot of manufacturing jobs aren't that. You know, does anyone think Massachusetts is worse off because it lost all of its cheap garment and shoemaking jobs to South Carolina and Georgia 100 years ago or whatever, whenever that was? We don't talk about that because Massachusetts is now full of biotech companies and all that kind of stuff. Ridiculous universities that are essentially, you know, private equity funds with students on the side. So I think the biggest problem with this trade stuff is it is fine to point to some of the problems that people

are talking about, including the administration, forgotten man, lack the lack of jobs that pay well for a strong back is a real problem. It's not fixable through trade and through protectionism. I will say this. I've been writing and let me put it this way. I've been beating up

on the Luddites because that's what the cool kids do for a really, really long time. And for people who don't remember the original Luddites were named after this guy named after a guy last named Ludd they tried to smash

they were basically terrorists they were the they were the people breaking Teslas of their age and they were they were smashing up the mills that you know the cotton mills the wool mills and that kind of stuff because they were taking the jobs

away from people who used to do this stuff by hand at least they identified the real problem right they didn't say oh the real problem are people a thousand miles away who are sewing they're like these robots which are these machines are taking our jobs away if you really want to do something about the changing nature of work you'd smash the computers that are making AI you'd smash the machines that are replacing human beings you wouldn't

say oh the reason why we can't have a one a single family earner of family in a nice car in a nice neighborhood these days is because Vietnamese people are making $500 a month sewing sneakers together. Because if you brought those jobs home, you cannot make those middle class high wage jobs

without sneakers being, you know, $3,000 a pair. It just doesn't work economically. Okay. So then let's bring this back to our congressional conversation. David, this week, well, Liberation Day. President unilaterally

imposes worldwide terror based on his own formulation for revenue generation and changing the fundamentals of the American economy, he says. Fast forward to this week, President lowers worldwide tariffs to 10% for all countries except China, Canada, and Mexico, as I'm sort of piecing it together. Still unilateral, still for the purpose of tweaking the American economy. Where, why? What? Where is Congress? How I guess I have this like fundamental question of I don't really see how a country is going to work if a single person in that country has this type of just unilateral power where Congress, really even with the budget, like I don't really understand what Congress is doing at all anymore. I am confused why media outlets still have entire teams dedicated to the Hill. it seems that they're not even really a parliamentary system at this point

and yet at the same time we're going to have I'm sure we've already had a few but we'll have more lawsuits about this and then the courts let's imagine step in and say president can't do this unilaterally as they said throughout the Biden presidency when it came to the eviction moratorium

the vaccine mandate student loan debt forgiveness each time what the Supreme Court said is a president alone can't do this. Congress, if you want this, feel free. And Congress didn't do anything on any of those. I think for the right, they were like, yeah, that's because there's no political will to do these things. At the same time, at some point, Congress not doing anything, maybe we should stop reading into it a political answer and just start reading into it. There is no more Congress. So is it actually, you know, we talked about the health of the three branches at the beginning and you said the courts are very healthy. Congress is on, you know,

life support and the president's filling the vacuum, part of what makes the courts healthy is it's checking the president's power from time to time. But will that actually be healthy at some point? I mean, what does it matter if the Supreme Court says no to some of this if the fundamentals of the problem aren't changing? Well, yeah, I was actually speaking about this very issue last night. And I said, do not think, when I say that the courts are the best functioning branch of government right now. I'm not saying, A, that the courts are perfect, but there are decisions I disagree with. But I think it's the best functioning branch of government by far, but do not for a minute think the courts alone can save us or save our system. Look at it

more as like a rear guard action at this point, that the courts are sort of in that last line that the constitutional republic army is retreating and the courts are kind of having this delaying action. Sarah, it's not Congress here. It's us. It's the American people. We keep doing this. And so, you know, one of the issues that we have right now, and I can't remember who tweeted this, but said essentially the United States of America is being run by the median primary, congressional primary voter. That is essentially sort of running the United States of America right now. Those are the people who decide the presidential primaries. I mean, look at the number difference.

17 million people voted for Trump in the primaries. 77, 78 million people voted for him in the general election. So you have very low primary participation, which means it's kind of the worst of all worlds. You don't get the full benefit of the democratic process because there's such small participation. And then you lose the sort of institutional wisdom and heft of the smoke-filled rooms that Jonah likes so much. much. So you're kind of, you know, left with exactly the worst kind of segment of America dominating our political class. And that's the, it's your most obsessed uncle on Facebook. And that's who's sort of running the thing. And so we can talk an awful lot about the different

branches of government. But the bottom line is, as of right now, we're getting exactly the kind of government with exactly the kind of Congress and exactly, by the way, kind of president that it seems like a critical mass of the American people want, especially a critical mass of those who are deeply obsessed with politics. And, you know, I can't, we just can't keep doing this if millions of Americans go to the polls actually vote for somebody and then get angry look what you made me do. That's just not going to work. David French, quoting Taylor Swift was not on my bingo card.

Jonah, okay, let's do a little short-term, long-term. On the tariff specifically, do you want the courts to step in, or do you think the American people should actually have to see the results of what they voted for? Because I'm a little torn on this myself. On the one hand, I think what Trump has. done is obviously unlawful and violates the constitutional separation of powers. I don't think Congress can delegate the power to set worldwide tariffs. I definitely don't think they did delegate the power to set worldwide tariffs under IEPA.

But I do think that every time the courts stop a president from doing something politically stupid, like they did with Biden over and over again, they distort the political process, little bit. Well, of course they do. Because a lot of people aren't paying attention. They just think like, oh, it must not have had much of an effect. I voted for this thing and everything turned out okay. And especially when it comes to these tariffs, Trump said he wanted tariffs. People voted for him. Then he did tariffs. Maybe it would be better for the voting population to actually live with what they voted for rather than have the Supreme Court come in and save them. So question one, short term, what solution do you want?

question two long term what solutions would you propose to make congress great again so i mean i'm not gonna bring cole to newcastle and talk to you guys about the courts too much um you guys have your own thing about that i have never heard that phrase before and i really like it you've never heard bring coals to newcastle no interesting yeah that's a good one it wasn't really the best usage of it for this context, but still, you know when I first heard it, just side story. So my dad was an executive of this company called United Media and they owned the rights to peanuts, Snoopy, all that kind of stuff. So my life was full of like Snoopy swag, just all over the place, right? Because they got all the plush this and sheets that and all that kind of thing. And my dad was friends with

Charles Schultz, whatever. Anyway, one year, a friend from out of town came by and gave my dad a Snoopy doll is a joke gift or a Snoopy tie or something like that. And I was like six at the time. And my dad was like, isn't this like bringing coal to Newcastle? Yep, that good usage. Okay. I will defer to you guys about whether this is the central issue or not in the specifically in the tariff stuff.

But more broadly, I would like the courts, whether it's in the tariff stuff, in the enemies and aliens act, whatever, all that kind of stuff. to throw some serious shade on the idea that the president can declare various emergencies or states of war based on garbage. That sort of mechanism, that sort of crisis mechanism, you know, we don't have to go arguments about Hitler, but that's what Hitler used, right? It's like it's why California is a mess because they created a constitutional carve out for states of emergency to break the budget, not to have a balanced budget. So everything gets declared an emergency, and you're off to the races. The New Deal, Woodrow Wilson, every sort of abuse of power in democracies, I shouldn't say everyone, most abuses of power in democracies are based upon the dubious invocation of a state of emergency or a crisis, whether it's climate change or the Huns or whatever, or by claiming metaphorical. Wars.

Like, I think we all agree the president has real powers when there's a real serious war going on. Like, troops are coming over the border, let the president have, you know, a free reign to do his stuff. Metaphorical wars, you know, figurative wars, declaring classes of people terrorists when, like, that's a stretch. And once you get to name them terrorists, then you get to say, okay, now I have war powers to deal with them as if we're at war. that stuff we in a democracy we should we should be very very skeptical of and in a republic small r we should be really really skeptical of and i i see the courts as by far the most republican small r institution they're the ones who are supposed to be the adults in the room thinking about not the common good because i know that's triggering but the greater good or the

the legitimacy of the regime and its purposes itself and the rule of law. So if the courts could help with that a little bit and say, hey, you know what, Congress needs to declare a war. Congress needs to declare an emergency. Congress has the ability to disagree with the president about whether there is an emergency and therefore take back some of these trading authorities or whatever it is. I don't want this to be an activist thing. I don't want the courts to do it if the law wouldn't allow it.

But the vibes I get from you guys and from others is that there is a color argument that the courts could make that Trump is exceeding the intended authority and the black letter of the law authority to do a lot of these things. And if that forces a confrontation between Trump and the courts, well, that's going to be inevitable anyway. So let's have it sooner around and later. And let's get on with it. So in our fascinating team effort that we did a couple years ago, we had a bunch of things. Among them were stuff like a congressional veto, where basically the Congress can claw back things within 90 days of the president's executive order and all these various other things.

I like that kind of stuff, right? I mean, it doesn't have to be the exact one that we came up with in our report. But the stuff that the Republicans who were the little beeps on the flat line that David was referring to at the beginning, them sort of doing the baby step stuff of saying we should have a certain amount of time to approve or disapprove of a president's unilateral tariffs and that kind of stuff, I think that's the gateway drug to getting Congress to figure out that they actually have this power. More of that, please. More hearings without cameras. Get rid of small donors. Get rid of

large donors. Get rid of donors. No, like, you know, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No, but getting getting rid of... Knock, knock, knock. It's the First Amendment. I know, I know. Giving the parties more power to control, to pick their candidates, control their candidates, and fixing the primaries would fix a lot of these things, but people know these tunes

for me pretty well by now. All right, David, I want you to answer both questions, actually. Do you want the courts to stop this? And I think just take as accepted, you know, yes, this is unlawful for our conversational purposes. Or would it actually be helpful

for voters to live with their choices. I mean, this in some ways goes back to what I wrote after I left the Trump administration, right? That in many ways the shallow state, as I called it, the people who were Trump appointees persuading Trump constantly not to do things, prevented the American people from seeing what a second Trump administration would actually look like and that that was a disservice in many ways to the country. He should have had the people he wanted around him to say yes and to try to implement his policies? Well, here we are. I'm getting my wish. And I'm a little torn on whether it does any good. If then he never actually gets to do his policies. And so the American people think, man, Trump would have been a great president except those pesky courts. Then they blame the

courts. That institution loses trust and legitimacy and credibility. And then we lose the courts, basically. P.S. listeners, I'm definitely stealing naming this argument and I don't actually believe it. That's a good. I like that addition. At every turn in this last 10 years, one or more of the branches has had used an excuse not to do their job. So there's always been sort of this higher reason. Well, if we do this then. But the bottom line is each branch should do its job. And the job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the laws of the end to say what the law is. Exactly. And so do the job. that do it. One of the core issues we had with Congress, one of the reasons why, for example, impeachment is a dead letter in spite of the fact that we have had throughout American history,

more than one really truly impeachable offense committed by a president is there's always been this sense. Well, there's a reason why, there's a reason why I do not have to do the job that the founder sent me here to do. You know, and after January 6th, there's this sort of conviction that set in amongst a bunch of Republicans is that we don't have to do our job now because Trump has self disqualified. And then they found out, well, no, actually with the Republican primary voters, he hasn't. And so they just completely failed to do their job because they believe somebody else was going to do their job. And this just keeps getting past, that buck keeps getting passed. And so, no, you know, the Supreme Court, I think, has, again, I don't agree with all of their

decisions. I have lots of beef with the immunity decision, but as I told a group of people last night, Donald Trump wasn't, the prosecution of Trump did not fail because of the Supreme Court's immunity decision. The prosecution of Trump failed because it was brought very late and the American people voted for him. That's why it failed. It wasn't because of the Supreme Court. Had the case been brought earlier, the same process would have occurred and it would have come back to the trial court in time for there to be an actual trial. So don't blame the Supreme Court for this. And I say that as somebody who strongly disagreed with that decision. So that's a little bit of a digression. But bottom line, every branch has to do its job. Stop playing nine dimensional chess.

You're not good at it. So it's funny on the chess thing, as someone sent me a quote from one of the books from one of Trump's anonymous, you know, off-the-record aides, speaking on background, I guess from the first term. And the quote was something like, people outside the White House think that Trump is playing four-dimensional chess. Meanwhile, those of us in the room are just trying to keep him from eating the pieces. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime.

That's the powerful backing of Amex Pre-sale tickets for future events Subject to Availability and VARED by race Terms and conditions apply Learn more at amex.ca.c.YANX. Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the garage door?

Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors and HD cameras with night vision? No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts at secure VPN for a private connection and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web?

Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about secure. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. I'm going to hijack this just for a second and ask you guys something related directly on the news. Last night, Trump issued some executive orders, which you didn't need to do by executive order, but he likes the ceremony of executive orders.

It's if he could issue Dick Tots from a throne of skulls, maybe he'd prefer to do that. but executive order that's the next best thing and saying basically open criminal investigations against two people I know it's not a bill of a tanger but like am I wrong

we were talking about this on this premium chat we did last night presidents used to go bend over pretty far backwards to even if a unitary executive I get it right the president can tell the justice department to open an investigation about anybody

that's because he's the executive branch I understand that right but didn't it used to be the case that presidents would try to reserve judgment about whether somebody was guilty or innocent until the end of such things? And isn't there a reason for that? I mean, I found the whole spectacle really troubling in the glibness of it and also how this is going to conceivably ruin a couple guys' life to defend themselves legally from something that shouldn't be done. On a zero to ten scale, how offensive is this to you guys? I mean, how offensive?

I mean, I'm not going to say 10 offensive because they're not actually shooting anybody yet. Right, he's not in the guillotine, so, you know. Yeah, it's very, very high. I mean, we're talking eight or nine. I mean, this is targeting an individual where the predicate for initiating a series of investigations appears to be he just really ticked off the president. By telling you the truth, right? We're talking about Miles Taylor and what's his name, Crabs, Chris Krebs, right? Let me give the other version of it.

Let me give the worst version of it, you know, because I think that's helpful here. Okay, so Miles Taylor, while employed in the administration by the government and a chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, published an op-ed anonymously criticizing the president. He didn't quit, you know, and then criticized the president. He kept his- We were critical of that at the time for listening. listeners who don't remember that, but go on. Absolutely, we were. So he used his proximity to government information, basically, and published an op-ed.

And then after he then leaves government service, then outs himself. And by the way, in the meantime of that, there was like this whole witch hunt within the administration of who it was. I will note that I was very much on the list of people they thought it was, though I pointed out to them that it was definitely not someone with a law degree and that it was going to be a, I mean, I literally called it. I was like, this is going to be a man between 35 and 45 who used to work in comms, who doesn't have a law degree, but all of the people on the list were women, I will note,

back in the day. So then he leaves government service, says he's anonymous, and goes on to sort of profit from that starting organizations, getting donor money, writing, and becoming sort of a public personality off being anonymous. For Chris Krebs, he denied that the 2020 election was so. stolen and kind of became the poster child for pushing back on Donald Trump about the election and sort of made a spectacle of himself. Again, I'm giving sort of the worst version of this.

And also upon leaving government service, wrote a book and made money off of his criticisms of the president. Okay. So with that, David, everything you just said was correct, right? they criticize the president while in government service is the predicate for the investigation. There's no, for instance, there's no accusation that they ever disclosed classified information

or national security information. Yeah, I don't really, like there's no alleged crime though they do mention the disclosure of sensitive government information, but that seems to refer to just things you learned while working for the government. Did you guys watch the actual, clip of Trump signing the thing?

You should watch it. Steve made us watch it on the town hall thing. We're not in a clockwork orange yet. You can't make me watch things like that. I just said should. His basic explanation, if people think I'm being unfair, go watch it. We'll put a link to it in the show notes if we can.

His basic explanation is that they were, he said the election wasn't stolen, that the election wasn't rigged, that it was the most secure election ever. And because of that, Joe Biden became president, and then he lists all these terrible things that Joe Biden did

that never would have happened if I were president. That's why this guy is a shady guy and should be investigated. That's the bulk of the substance. But if you're on the right right now, I mean, like what I've heard from my, you know, sort of MAGA supporting friends

is something like, yeah, I don't like that Trump has done this. It's a waste of his time. It's a, you know, it's inappropriate. But I'm not going to lose any. sleep over it because these were buffoon guys trying to undermine the president and they kind of got what's coming to him. Basically a version of like, we don't criticize our own side. Yeah. That's not a great argument here at the dispatch.

I mean, I'm trying to get. I know. I know what you're doing. Yeah. I mean, I think what you're hitting on, Sarah, that sense that people have, which you are absolutely accurately describing is a sign of how much we have dehumanized our political opponent. that the mere fact that they stood up, and admittedly in a pretty dramatic way at different times, but the fact that they stood up means not that, not just that they should receive all of the social condemnation or the political condemnation or the public criticism,

but they are now open for, it's open season on them as humans. And you see some of this with, you know, for example, around the El Salvador in prison. Well, you came into this country illegal, what did you expect now you now you're hours now you're at our mercy you came to this country illegally you've got what's coming to you had you not come to this country illegally then you wouldn't be sitting here in this el salvador in prison you idiot you know like this sort of like dehumanize but when you pull some of these things out of the you know out out of that the

kind that hyper political context like this sort of idea that once you transgress once you do something that violates a norm, you are essentially like just less than human, less than worthy of being treated with any dignity. Imagine like you're driving down the road and you just see a police officer wailing on somebody, just beating them to death. And you're like, what are you doing? And he says, well, he was speeding. And you go, oh, well, if he wasn't speeding, none of this would have happened to him. It's kind of the way we treat our political opponents now if they transgress against us politically, we treat them in this incredibly brutal way. And we have very little regard for their rights. And we are getting a diminishing amount of regard

for the rights of people we disagree with in this country. And I think the absolute shrug of the shoulders you see on the part of the on the part of millions of Americans to this is it is evidence of that. All right, David. So real quick then, what are your suggestions for making Congress great again? Yeah, you know, I really enjoy doing our guard rules of democracy project. And looking at that, there's a couple of things that very simple things, actually. And I'll just focus on this one little element, how Congress's own rules are a problem. So, for example, current congressional rules and precedents allow for congressional leadership. They give them congressional leaders an enormous amount of ability to just block legislation from reaching the floor, even if they know that a majority of the member the House and Senate support the legislation. So here's something that is very simple. Reform the rules so that majority votes can force a vote on legislation, that a speaker or a majority leader doesn't have that ability. And the House, that would mean getting rid of that what's called the Hastert rule, this informal rule where speakers don't schedule votes unless the

bill enjoys a majority support of the majority parties, you know, a majority support of the majority party's caucus. I mean, this is stuff. that's not in the Constitution. This is just rules in Congress that are designed to enhance the power of leadership. So I think we need to get rid of those rules. A majority can force a vote on legislation. Also, I, you know, I'm very open to filibuster reform, not filibuster removal, not filibuster the ending of the filibuster, but filibuster reform. I'm kind of along the lines of some of the critiques we made about how difficult it is to amend the Constitution or some observations about how difficult is to amend the Constitution. Maybe we need to lower the threshold for a filibuster to

overcome a filibuster. So filibuster reform, get rid of the Haster Rule, these are smaller things that I think could have an actual effect. For example, we could have possibly had some floor votes on tariffs, but for congressional leadership blocking the ability to do that. And that would have been very useful to get majorities on record sending some legislation up to the president, making him veto it if he's going to veto it. So these rule reforms, I think, could make a difference. I like that. All right. Little not worth your time. I don't know if you all have seen the videos where baby six to nine-month-old babies are crying, and the parent throws a craft single on their face.

Cheese slice, just to make it clear. If you don't know what a craft single is. No, I know, but like you should finish that sentence because otherwise if people aren't unfamiliar, I don't mean this to be like Steve here and like, the speaker of the house, but like, they're throwing pieces of cheese at the baby's head. Yeah, sorry.

Yeah, and it like sticks on their head and the baby stops crying. And there was a real conversation in our Slack channel over whether this was hilarious, Jonah, or cruel, Mike Warren. And so I decided to run the experiment myself. Now, my second child is 19 months old. He is much older than the babies in this video. But he does cry a lot. Lots of screaming and anger toward me. So it didn't take long once I got my video set to record

for him to cry about something or other. In this case, the pantry door wasn't opening with the cabinet door that the pantry door blocks, right? Like, you can only open one at a time. And that was outrageous to him. So at that moment, I hit record and I threw a craft single at his face. Now, I will tell you,

it occurs to me now that those babies are like more horizontal so when you throw the craft single at their face it like sticks because you know gravity but my 19 month old was standing so it didn't stick on his face however i will report it absolutely worked he was charmed by the whole thing and wanted me to keep doing it over and over again and was giggling within moments then the brisket who's now almost five years old, wanted me to do it to him. And I was like, well, you have to pretend to cry. So he did. I threw the cheese at his face, delighted.

So, you know, you don't believe everything you read on the internet. But Jonah, do you stand by that this is awesome and worth trying, given my, you know, data of two children? Right. So I was very proud of the fact that I'm the one who started this whole conversation in Slack by putting the thing in there. And it was a very robust conversation. I joked that I was open to doing it to this. dispatch staffers, the problem is the ones from Wisconsin would line up like seals catching sardines. If it, look, if it works, like if it truly works at scale, that this just actually makes babies stop crying,

then we have just given a gift of billions of dollars to the craft company. They can come up with a whole new line of baby pacifying cheese, right? And, you know, markets for everything, man. It's like, if we need to kick the tires on this, nope, don't kick the babies. Kick the tires on this, metaphorically speaking. Moreover, I think we got to find out because now you've pushed the age limit up here. There was, again, a robust discussion about whether or not you, Mike Warren, ridiculously, I mean, ridiculously claim that babies don't cry for no reason.

Yeah, that was. that was the weirdest thing I'd ever heard and then he backed off a little bit by saying no toddlers cry for no reason but not babies unclear untrue still still false but the fact that you tested this on toddlers and and really a child right because like the brisket's not a toddler anymore no five isn't a toddler though in fairness he wasn't really fair fair but my point is that these early tests are promising promising and it may turn out that this This works on adults, too. Oh, my God, I'm going to try it on, Scott.

That's a great idea. This is a big crier. This is so truly not worth our time. All right, I'm sorry. I'm filibustering, David. I know you believe in filibuster reform, but I will just go to you. Just in the finest traditions are not worth your time. We spent several minutes describing how babies sometimes stop crying when they're distracted by amusing things.

Did we just do that? Okay. Will you commit to throwing cheese at your grandson? I would try it. I would try it. And I do think that we need to clarify that this is not throwing in the sense of hurling. This is throwing in the sense of like this very gentle lob where it kind of plops on top of their head. And it's not like a wedge of Parmesan, right?

You're like really clear. It's this little gentle, it's this gentle little toss. It would work with so many different things. No, but it has to be like that like moist, sticky, weird sensation of a craft single landing on your face and covering your eyes. I think that's what's doing it. I mean, what would be fantastic if it turned out it was only craft? Like a cheese slice made by any other company,

there's some ingredient, there's some secret sauce missing, and the kid just screams even louder. But when you use craft, that's when I'm buying stock and craft. And we'll take a quick break to hear from our sponsor for Craft Singles. All right. Thank you for joining us. We'll talk to you next week. Bye bye. Okay. I'm done. Okay. Let's go. Oh, we are going. Okay, sorry. Welcome to invite. Nope.